Tourism officials in Japan and Taiwan are promoting travel between the two nations with railway maps that show 32 stations with similar names.
Officials said the maps have been successful at bringing the two nations closer together and increasing exchanges, citing their use by individual and group travelers who follow the maps to the stations.
Some shared station names include Taoyuan (桃園, Momozono in Japanese) on the Nagoya Line in Japan’s Mie Prefecture and Fugang (富岡, Fukou) on the JR East Line in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, both of which are station names used along western Taiwan’s main trunk line (in Taoyuan and Miaoli counties respectively).
Photo: Chang Mao-sen, Taipei Times
The “imagined” map was a joint effort between the bureau and the Japan Tourism Organization, said Cheng Yi-ping (鄭憶萍), a section chief at the Tourism Bureau’s International Travel Division, adding that their purpose was to find and emphasize commonalities between the two nations.
Visitors to Tainan County’s Sinshih Station (新市) have said that it reminds them of Shinichi Station in Japan’s Hiroshima Prefecture, he said.
Similar place names between the two nations have resulted in exchanges and visits by people on both sides, he said, citing Taipei’s Songshan (松山, Matsuyama), which has an equivalent in Japan’s Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku Island.
The administrators of Taitung County’s Guanshan Station (關山, Sekiyama) have gone a step further, setting up official interactions with the administrators of the similarly named station on the Shinetsu Main Line in Myoko, Niigata.
About 4.5 million Taiwanese visit Japan annually, while about 2 million Japanese visit Taiwan — numbers that are likely to keep increasing as more commonalities are found between the democratic and historically linked nations, Cheng said.
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